Hints that something wasn't right before autistic girl died

Murder investigation transcripts reveal new insights into Melissa Stoddard's life.

By GABRIELLE RUSSON

The moment was fleeting, but it was clear that Melissa Stoddard did not want to go home on one of her last days at Oak Park School.

With her family waiting in the office, Melissa whimpered and put her head down when it was time to leave the classroom, her safe haven. Her mood change only lasted a few seconds, but it left an impression on her teacher and his colleague.

“She never really did that before,” said Karin Hammond, an aide at the Sarasota County school for disabled students.

As part of a criminal investigation into Melissa's caregivers, a sheriff's detective interviewed Oak Park staff and first-responders. The State Attorney's Office recently released the transcripts, revealing new insight into Melissa's behavior at school and the warning signs that paramedics saw on the night the child stopped breathing at her Sarasota County home.

Portions of the 200 pages of interviews are heavily redacted. Sheriff's Detective Stephanie Graham interviewed the school employees and paramedics in December and February.

Melissa, an 11-year-old autistic child, died Dec. 17 after lingering for days from injuries caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. Police say she had been tied up and her mouth duct-taped shut. Prosecutors alleged Melissa was abused her parents, who routinely tied her to a board to keep her from acting out and left her outside alone.

The Stoddards' defense attorneys have proclaimed their clients' innocence and denied the allegations.

“Nothing he did rises to the level of a crime. The fact my client isn't charged with murder speaks for itself,” said Kenneth Stoddard's attorney, Eric Reisinger, in an interview this summer.

“The truth will come out in court.”

Added David Taylor, who represented Misty Stoddard at a hearing in January: “We're going to show these allegations by the state are not true.”

No trial date has been set.

On Dec. 12 — the night Melissa stopped breathing in her bedroom — first-responders rushed to the house in the 9000 block of Delft Road, a shady dead-end street in an area where cows graze near newly developed neighborhoods.

The front door was open and Misty Stoddard stood outside when paramedics Scott McComas and Billy Green arrived first, according to the transcripts.

“We had a bad feeling when we walked in the door,” Green told investigators. “I've learned over a while to trust my gut, and, and my gut just, I had, like a brick in my gut.”

'A weird feeling'

Inside, the house was in disarray.

Dirty dishes and containers of leftover food covered the kitchen counters. The trash can had overflowed and spilled onto the floor.

Melissa, who had no pulse and was not breathing, lay on her back on the living room floor.

Her father was on Melissa's left, holding the phone on a 911 call with one hand and doing compressions with the other hand.

The room was dark and the paramedics smelled vomit.

McComas immediately noticed marks on both the girl's arms. Some of the wounds were fresh, like paper cuts, from her elbows to her wrists.

The two men, trained as both paramedics and firefighters, noticed Melissa wore jean shorts and a long-sleeved shirt rather than pajamas.

The other Stoddard children were watching in the living room as the rescue unfolded.

Melissa's 8-year-old half-sister screamed over and over until she ran out of breath, her shrieks “an octave that would shatter glasses,” Green told investigators.

“Get the kids out of here,” the paramedic repeated twice to the Stoddards, who did nothing.

The third time, Green said it in a different tone that was more urgent.

As the paramedics tried to save Melissa and performed CPR, Kenneth Stoddard kept getting in their way. He reached in until Green ordered him back.

Green wanted to move Melissa into the ambulance, away from the chaos, because he could hardly see in the dimly lit room. He had only been in the Stoddards' house for a few minutes, but it felt like an hour, he told investigators.

“I wanted out of the house badly, really badly,” Green said.

The paramedics put Melissa on a stretcher and hurried outside.

When Green got back to the ambulance, a piece of rolled duct tape had stuck on his leg. He brushed the crumpled blue tape off, not thinking anything of it.

He did not realize it could be evidence.

McComas told investigators that he had been a firefighter for nine years and a paramedic for three years, long enough to know what human responses are normal in terrible situations. He said he knew how to read people fairly well.

Something was not right at the Stoddard home: How the parents were reluctant to give important medical information and how their concern did not feel quite genuine, McComas told investigators.

“It's the vibe I felt,” he later said as investigators interviewed him. “It's just a weird feeling.”

Melissa's father was worried, but calm. Not desperate. He did not beg them to save his daughter, his little girl, his baby. He did not say, “Do whatever you can for my child,” Green recounted.

“There was never anything said from him that would have helped us associate him as being a parent,” said Green, who was surprised when he learned in the emergency room that Kenneth Stoddard was Melissa's biological father.

Odd behavior

Melissa's pulse started again, and her body was warm to the touch, but the paramedics knew her situation was still grave.

Green was not alone at Doctors Hospital of Sarasota.

Other paramedics knew how traumatizing it was when the 911 call involved a child.

Robin Brightbill, one of the paramedics who had been on the job for two decades, consoled Green in one of the hospital rooms that EMS used to write reports.

Behind a closed door, they talked about the case and how to get the report done.

The door opened, and Kenneth Stoddard appeared with a strange expression on his face.

Brightbill and Green both looked up.

“Do you need any help?” Brightbill recalled asking.

Melissa's father was silent. He looked at the two paramedics for a minute and then walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

About five minutes later, Kenneth Stoddard returned. It was the same again. He stood, just staring, not saying a word.

After he left the second time, Green got up to shut the door. He looked down the hallway where Stoddard had pulled up a chair halfway between the EMS room and an adjacent room.

The sheriff's investigator asked Brightbill if Kenneth Stoddard was eavesdropping. “That would probably been an assumption,” Brightbill said. “I, I don't know.”

Kenneth Stoddard seemed more like a scared parent than a concerned one, Brightbill later said, looking back on the case.

“I've dealt with more kids than I ever want to deal with in my life. And I've seen the parents and I've had to interact with the parents. And this was not a normal parent grieving,” Brightbill said. “This, this was different.”

Doing better

Two weeks behind the other students, Melissa started the 2012-13 year at Oak Park full of defiance.

She had moved to her father and stepmother's house from her home in North Carolina because her brother had molested her, according to a Florida Department of Children and Families report.

At the start of the school year, she threw chairs and ran around the classroom, destroying anything she could. Her aggression was triggered by practically anything, such as being asked to eat her breakfast.

As bad as the tantrums were, Melissa never hurt herself or beat her head against the wall, said her teacher, Paul Squeo, 52, who worked at the district since 2006.

Squeo emphasized that to the sheriff's detective when she interviewed him three days after Melissa's death.

The teacher said he suspected his student was troubled by the way Melissa uttered angry phrases, words that she seemed to be repeating from what she heard at home. It was like she was retelling a script.

If somebody asked Melissa to wash her hands, she responded with, “Get out.”

But within a matter of weeks of when she first arrived at Oak Park, Squeo was impressed by how much Melissa's behavior improved.

Her progress went from up to 10 tantrums a day to voluntarily asking for her work and completing her lessons so she could play on the computer as a reward.

“Your daughter could have gone to Harvard,” Squeo recalled telling Kenneth Stoddard one day after Melissa behaved perfectly.

The Stoddards routinely picked up Melissa from school. It was a chance for them to talk with Squeo and get updates on Melissa.

Squeo said he did not know the reason behind this positive change in Melissa.

Was the staff at Oak Park connecting with her? Did her new glucose-free diet — which the Stoddards insisted she follow — work?

Whether the diet helped or not with her behavior, it caused other problems.

Melissa was miserable when she was not allowed to eat the goldfish crackers the other students ate as rewards on their good days.

She cried over her bowl of chicken, rice and broccoli.

She begged for food and would steal from the other students, if the adults in the classroom did not pay attention. Melissa was quick, an excellent thief.

She hoarded her stolen treats and hid plastic baggies of snacks around the classroom.

Growing up

Tensions were growing in the classroom, and the Stoddards were concerned about Squeo. They felt he was giving Melissa forbidden food, a charge that Squeo vehemently denied.

They ignored Squeo when he tried to schedule a group meeting with Melissa's entire school team, including a school psychiatrist and a behavior specialist.

Instead, the Stoddards arranged to meet on Nov. 8 with Mirella Lee, another teacher at Oak Park.

During the 45-minute meeting, Melissa sat with her head down, her arms in her lap, in the corner.

She was quiet and well-behaved. Lee told investigators that she could not tell if Melissa was anxious or bored. It was different from the girl who roamed the classroom or uttered short phrases during school.

From time to time, Melissa glanced up at her father and kept repeating, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” Lee recalled.

Those apologies flooded out every 10 minutes, but Kenneth and Misty Stoddard ignored it. It was as if Melissa was not there. “It was like she was just part of the furniture in the room,” Lee told investigators.

Misty Stoddard did most of the talking, like she usually did, and she looked to Kenneth for approval.

They wanted to take Melissa home from school early that day. The Stoddards did not want Melissa at Oak Park unless she behaved better, they said.

Lee told investigators that it struck her as strange because Melissa's anger and defiance was no longer such an issue like at the beginning of the year.

Before the Stoddards left, Lee was close enough to Melissa that she noticed the child's pimples for the first time. She realized Melissa, who had already gotten her period that year, was maturing into a teenager.

“And I look at her and I said, 'Oh my God, Melissa, you're growing,' ” Lee recalled later. “She took my hand and she put my hand on her cheek. And she just held it there for while.”